Middle East

May. 16, 2014 | 12:07 AM

Egypt’s Sisi asks for U.S. help in fighting terrorism

An Egyptian national residing in Saudi Arabia holds a T-shirt with an image of presidential canditade Ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as he waits to cast his vote at the Egyptian embassy in Riyadh, on May 15, 2014. (AFP PHOTO/FAYEZ NURELDINE)

Comments

Your feedback is important to us!

We invite all our readers to share with us their views and comments about this article.

Disclaimer: Comments submitted by third parties on this site are the sole responsibility of the individual(s) whose content is submitted. The Daily Star accepts no responsibility for the content of comment(s), including, without limitation, any error, omission or inaccuracy therein. Please note that your email address will NOT appear on the site.

Alert: If you are facing problems with posting comments, please note that you must verify your email with Disqus prior to posting a comment. follow this link to make sure your account meets the requirements. (http://bit.ly/vDisqus)

Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the general who ousted an elected Islamist president and is set to become Egypt's next head of state, called on the United States to help fight jihadi terrorism to avoid the creation of new Afghanistans in the Middle East.

Sisi said the West must understand that terrorism would reach its doorstep unless it helped eradicate it.

Sisi said the army had been forced to intervene by a popular uprising against the Brotherhood's partisan rule.

Gulf states poured billions of dollars in aid into Egypt to prop up the economy after Sisi toppled the Brotherhood. Sisi would not predict when Egypt would no longer need that aid, but said Egypt needed to stand on its own feet.

If Sisi is elected president, he would become the latest in a line of Egyptian rulers drawn from the military since the army toppled the monarchy in 1952 – a pattern briefly interrupted by Morsi's one year in office.

Underscoring the military's long-standing hostility to the Brotherhood, Sisi said the group had become irrelevant in Egyptian society and ruled out any reconciliation with the oldest and most powerful Islamist movement in the Middle East.